Webinar recording: Creating elementary schools that emulate children's museums
April 6, 2023
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The design team for Seneca Valley School District's Ehrman Crest Elementary and Middle School hosted a discussion on the project's origin, planning process and partnership that brought the vision to life.
While elementary schools and children’s museums essentially seek to do the same thing—inspire children and activate learning—they approach it in very different ways. But, maybe they shouldn’t? Maybe designing elementary schools to be more like children’s museums can give students and teachers more agency and ensure more compelling, joyful, exciting and successful experiences for students.
Seneca Valley School District outside of Pittsburgh dared to follow this path and asked CannonDesign and the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh to collaboratively design its new Ehrman Crest Elementary and Middle School. The result is an entirely new type of school, one that activates learning everywhere: in corridors, indoors, outdoors, in group learning spaces, along peg walls and via environmental graphics.
This presentation explored the design process and decisions that made Ehrman Crest possible and offered an early look at how it's being received by students and teachers.
Thank you to our panelists:
- Lauri Pendred, Principal, Ehrman Crest Elementary School
- Michael Corb, Education Practice Leader, CannonDesign
- Anne Fullenkamp, Senior Director of Creative Experiences, Children's Museum of Pittsburgh
- Troy Hoggard, Design Principal, CannonDesign
